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Pender's Blog by Lee Pender, RCPU Editor

Vista: Still an Offer You Can't Refuse

Imagine the scene (entirely fictional, of course): Bill Gates,
Ray Ozzie and Steve Ballmer kick back in the dimly lit basement
of a Seattle coffee shop, double lattes steaming. Kevin Johnson,
the new Windows boss, and Jim Allchin, long-time head of Windows
now on his way out, relax in leather chairs. Over hands of high-stakes
poker, Gates and Ballmer spin tales for Ozzie about their most famous
whackings -- Kahn, Andreessen, now McNealy. Just then, a minion
knocks timidly on the door.

Hat in hand, the underling enters the musty room and nervously
breaks the bad news: Vista, the next version of Windows, is going
to ship later than planned -- even later than Microsoft said it
would a couple of months ago. We're talking RTM in Q2 2007
now, which means everything -- even the version for volume licenses
due in November -- gets bumped once again, well into next year.
Partners aren't going to like this, the minion bleats. Consumers
are going to have to wait even longer, too...

Johnson looks up nervously from his cards at the Godfather and
his consigliore. Gates and Ballmer shrug. Allchin, a made man, takes
a pull of latte. Ozzie looks at his cards, waiting silently for
a reaction. "Eh," Ballmer says. "It's not
as though we haven't been through this before. Besides, if
users don't like it, they can just buy the competitor's
product." With that phrase out, Ballmer begins a long, slow
laugh that builds into a full-fledged guffaw. Gates bursts into
laughter. Allchin takes a pull of latte. Ozzie joins in the laughter,
slapping a nervous Johnson on the back.

Back in the real world, the analysts at Gartner say
there's no way Microsoft will have Vista ready by the dates
it re-stated in March: November for volume licenses and January
for everybody else. Microsoft says everything's still on for November/January
as planned -- or re-planned, as the case may be.

But the real question here isn't when Vista will come out, it's
whether or not you care about another Vista delay. You're going
to sell and develop for Windows no matter what, right? Regardless
of version? The buzz now is that nobody (except Microsoft, presumably)
really cares whether Vista comes out "on time" in late
2006/early 2007 or a few months later. Vista will still be an offer
nobody can refuse, even if it's late; there are no real alternatives.
If Vista really does slip into Q2 of next year, is it a big deal
for you? For anybody? Or is it just business as usual with Microsoft?
Let me know what you think at lpender@rcpmag.com.

I've Got You, Babe...For Now
Let the word go out to Simon & Garfunkel, Hall & Oates,
Loggins & Messina and even Peaches & Herb -- Microsoft and
SAP now have a "Duet" of their own. Formerly known as Mendocino, the
integration of SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) processes
into Office is now called, rather poetically, Duet.
It's scheduled to ship in June.

For users of these two completely dominant sets of applications,
Duet could make beautiful music. For SAP, it's an immediate
interface upgrade into the ubiquitous Office applications. For Microsoft...it
might very well be a signal that Redmond is serious about ERP. The
company is finally starting to make a coherent push behind its own
Dynamics ERP applications, talking strategy and roadmaps and introducing
a big new advertising campaign. Microsoft might just be using Duet
to show that it's into the ERP thing before eventually de-emphasizing
the SAP partnership and steering customers over to the new, improved
Dynamics -- expected to be a single-platform supersuite by 2009
or so.

Along those same lines, Microsoft announced
a partnership with UGS, a maker of product lifecycle management
(PLM) software, this week that will bring the full UGS PLM product
suite to the Microsoft platform. Microsoft already has a similar
deal with another PLM giant, France's Dassault Systemes, whose products
are still sold largely through IBM. PLM software lets companies
automate the design and manufacturing of all sorts of products and then manage the "lifecycle" (maintenance, repair, etc.)
of those products until they get put out to pasture. It's a money
spinner of a software sector that has cross-industry appeal but
is absolutely enormous among automakers, aerospace firms and just
about anybody else who deals with anything mechanical. Is Redmond
on the hunt for a PLM play? Stay tuned...

Hey, Redmond, Watch Out for Those Goths
Microsoft issued
an earnings warning last week that sent Wall Street into a bit
of a panic. There was good news, though -- Redmond plans to boost
R&D spending in the months to come.

The question is how and where that money is going to be spent.
Microsoft is into just about everything now, from video games (the
money-losing Xbox) to ERP. Most of the time, when Microsoft wants
to dominate a market, it just goes and does it. Maybe not overnight,
but eventually. That's pretty much been the rule in most categories
of software, anyway. Still, we have to wonder how far the hegemony
of Windows will take Redmond. Dynamics is getting ready to ramp
up big time, and Microsoft is now making interesting little moves
in business intelligence and even PLM, among many other categories.
What's the final frontier? Is there one? Like the Roman Empire,
could Microsoft ever spread itself too thin and suffer some (or
many) consequences?

As a partner, where would you like to see Microsoft go -- or not
go -- next? Tell me what you think at lpender@rcpmag.com.

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Somehow, 'MSN It' Just Doesn't Have the Same
Ring to It
Here we go again...this time it's Google complaining
that Internet Explorer 7 might violate antitrust rules. It seems
as though Microsoft might want to use IE7 to direct users to MSN
Search rather than Google.

What's that you say? Microsoft using one product to steer users
to another? Shocking...

Note to Google: Hey, we see where you're coming from. But, you've
got a good thing going, and nobody has ever really taken down Microsoft
in the courts. Keep focusing on innovation, and don't let the legal
stuff distract you. You're part of the Internet lexicon now -- much
more so than Netscape ever was. It's better to keep Redmond on its
toes through innovation and clever marketing than it is to get wrapped
up in court.